Ludemes, ‘game as language’, and other metaphors

Say It Like You Play It

In this episode we try to wrap our heads around the concept of 'ludemes'. Hosts Dr. Ibi and Dr. Joe discuss:

• The origins of the term 'ludeme'
• Different games scholars' and game designers' definitions of ludemes
• Comparisons between ludemes, memes, genes, and linguistic concepts such as phonemes and morphemes
• Underlying metaphors used to describe games as systems, such as ‘game as language’ and ‘game as organism’
• The ‘language as organism’ metaphor in historical linguistics
• The economy of metaphors in academia

List of sources we read for this episode:

Bojin, Nis. 2010. ‘Ludemes and the Linguistic Turn’. Futureplay '10: Proceedings of the International Academic Conference on the Future of Game Design and

Technology, Vancouver, 25–32. DOI: https://doi.org/10.1145/1920778.1920783

Browne, Cameron. 2021. ‘Everything’s a Ludeme. Well, Almost Everything’. Proceedings of the XIIIrd Board Game Studies Colloquium (BGS 2021), Paris.

Available at: https://sorbonne-paris-nord.hal.science/hal-03737317/document

Depaulis, Thierry. 2019. ‘On the Origins of the Word ‘Ludeme’ (French Ludème)’. In Browne et al.,

Foundations of Digital Archaeoludology. Report on Dagstuhl Research Meeting, Saarbrucken, 23–26. DOI: https://doi.org/10.48550/arXiv.1905.13516

Available at: https://arxiv.org/pdf/1905.13516

Koster, Raph. 2005. Conference notes for ‘A Grammar of Gameplay (Game Atoms: Can Games be Dia- grammed?)’. Game Developers Conference (GDC ’05), San Francisco. https://www.theoryoffun.com/grammar/gdc2005.htm

Koster, Raph. 2006. 'A bit on how I think games work' https://www.raphkoster.com/2006/03/05/a-bit-on-how-i-think-games-work/

Koster, Raph. 2006. Comment made March 7, 2006 at 2:44 pm

https://www.raphkoster.com/2006/03/05/a-bit-on-how-i-think-games-work/#comment-3827

Koster, Raph. 2006. Comment made March 7, 2006 at 4:26 pm

https://www.raphkoster.com/2006/03/05/a-bit-on-how-i-think-games-work/#comment-3836

Parlett, David. 2006. ‘What’s a ludeme?’ https://www.parlettgames.uk/gamester/whatsaludeme.html

Contains some strong (and other type types of) language.

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